Thursday

'no anorexia' the new nolita campaign realised by oliviero toscani for the fashion brand of the flash&partners group, from italy leaves no room for doubt. The subject chosen to convey this message, in particular for young women who follow fashion, is that of a young girl who has fallen victim to the sickness which along with bulimia, affects as many as two million people in italy alone. Toscani has literally laid his subject bare, to show the reality of this sickness to all through this naked body, a sickness that in most cases is caused by the stereotypes imposed on women by the fashion world.

The Fashion world has reacted positively.

The rest has been hit and miss.

I think it is great.

Toscani of course brought us the great photos made famous in teh Benetton campaigns.

Keeping up with email and social networking messages can be hard work for young people leaving their digital footprints all over the web. Catering to the need for a simplified online presence, a new website called Fuser launched this week. Fuser allows users to organize emails from multiple accounts (including Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Hotmail, and POP), as well as messages from MySpace and Facebook, into one all-encompassing secure inbox, thus eliminating the need to bounce back and forth between multiple addresses and sites. Fuser users respond to emails as they would with a typical webmail application. Facebook members can even view Facebook wall posts and respond either by responding on the friend’s wall or by sending a message to the friend.

Fuser also offers users a “map” of their network by ranking friends according to how many times they have sent messages/posted on their wall; these rankings can even be viewed according to specific time periods. As young people value documentation such as this, as well as the site’s primary aggregation service, the site may find an audience.

And by the way: MySpace just launched a free, ad-supported mobile service for its users. The service works on all U.S. carriers, and allows users to send/receive messages and friend requests, comment on profiles and photos, post bulletins, update blogs, search for friends, and change their “mood” status.

"If you look at where all the best ideas in advertising are created, it tends to be in places where taking risks is acceptable. Where budgets are small and under the radar. Where not too many people want to be involved. Where the agency or client has nothing to lose. Where the environment or culture is forced to deal with risk on a daily basis."- William Charnock, JWT NY

Wednesday

Couldn't help but link to a recent post from Godin. When you've got something to say, make sure it counts. Such a true post in our industry - anyone can repeat the same facts but standing out with a meaningful comment takes something different.

Complete Godin post below:"When you are ready to stand up and speak.

Perhaps you should consider sitting down.

When you are asked to give a short talk at the big company gathering, or contribute a few minutes in a large group discussion, and you're ready to stand up and have all eyes on you, sometimes, perhaps, it makes sense to sit down instead.

If you're a bit nervous and you've written everything out and your main goal is to say nothing controversial, nothing memorable, nothing that might get you in trouble... well, why say it?

If your job is to act as filler, to say a small not-so-funny joke and then stall for a minute or two, or your job is to put in an appearance, or perhaps to make sure that senior management knows you exist, I bet there are far better ways to pull that off.

The traffic engineers in New York think nothing of wasting two minutes of each person's time as they approach a gated toll booth. Multiply that two minutes times 12,000 people and it's a lot of hours every day, isn't it? If you're speaking to a thousand people for just a minute or two or three and you don't have anything in particular to communicate, you've just wasted many hours of the most expensive time your organization has purchased this year.

Big groups are perfect places for the efficient communication of emotion. They are terrific for the impact that comes from watching your peers shake their heads in agreement simultaneously. The power of groupthink doesn't happen in an electronic memo, but it can sure be powerful in a big room.

The flipside is obvious: if all you want to do is recite a fact or a policy or worst of all, not really be noticed, then it's probably better to just sit down."

Monday

John Maeda, MIT Media Lab professor and author of the short book The Laws of Simplicity, discusses the art of creating simple art and elegant web sites.

What I love about this video is the presentation style. The slides aren't filled with content, just great, simple images that Maeda took on his vacation. Nice to watch someone actually present their thoughts and ideas - rather than just write them all on a couple (hundred) slides.

One of the saddest stories these days is about CMU professor Randy Pausch. Randy, a 46 year-old father of three, was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer. After a number of treatments, doctors have given him approximately 3-6 months to live.

This amazing article by Matt Roch, describes Randy's last lecture to his CMU class. The lecture was about fulfilling your childhood dreams and helping others accomplish theirs. It was about hope and the fantastic life that Randy led - even though it was cut short.

Attended by over 400 students and faculty and webcast to hundreds of others, it was a remarkable lecture given the context.

One of my favorite quotes was about Randy's dream to one day play in the NFL. His coach, a classic, hard nosed guy said to him after a brutal practice: "When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

Check out the article if you have a second - it's sad stuff but pretty enlightening to see what kind of person Randy Pausch is.

Here is the agency pitch to Plug. "Ok, picture Ron Jeremy dressed up like Jesus, drinking JD straight from the bottle, hitting on girls, using his Jesus powers to turn 5's into scantily clad 10's basically making everything in the bar better. He then leaves the bar with a some arm candy jumps into limo and then usues his JC power to turn the TV station to plug. The insight is our target market loves booze, tits, limos and hot chicks. We will have their attention and then show them that Plug TV like all of those thing is awesome."

I doubt it went like that but honestly - who pitches this crap AND who the hell approves it.